Bruce Merchant,the city's former public services department director who was hired by the city as a consultant on the Allied site, requested the additional $160,000 at a work session last week to move the process forward. Of the $160,000, about $40,000 would be paid to Merchant.

The $160,000 would come from the city's water fund reserves.

Merchant proposed a timeline that calls for developing a strategic plan this summer, including investigating alternative technological options for ridding the soil of PCBs, implementing a public relations campaign, and citizen involvement.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering multiple options for cleaning the site along the Kalamazoo River of 1.5 million cubic yards of polychlorinated-biphenyl laden soil. Those options include capping and monitoring it, which it estimated would cost about $41 million.

The EPA estimates that to fully clean up the site and remove the contaminated soil would cost at least $189 million. Full clean up and removal is the option favored by Kalamazoo officials.

A proposal for the site likely will be unveiled by the EPA before the end of 2014. An EPA representative said at an open house last month Kalamazoo officials had asked to slow down the process and engage the community. EPA officials originally had wanted to propose a cleanup alternative by summer.